1.2. Early and Middle Indo-European

Features of the Middle Proto-Indo-European or Proto-Indo-Anatolian (PIA) parent language can be reconstructed based on Proto-Anatolian (PA) differences with the Common Indo-European (CIE) trunk—defined in turn by differences between Tocharian and other Late PIE dialects—complemented with data informed by internal reconstruction (Kloekhorst 2016, 2017, 2018; Pooth 2018).

o Intermediate period A: sometimes spread of vowel *e to unaccented morphemes, e.g. nom. acc. *mén-es. Zero-grade forms may be replaced by its full-grade form in analogy to hysterodynamic paradigms; e.g. gen. *mn-és-es.

o Sound Law 2: all unaccented *e are weakened to *o. Regular outcome of *mén-es, *mn-és-es is then *mén-os, *mn-és-os.

o Intermediate period B: new regularisations, e.g. the accented e-grade is generalised throughout the paradigm, yielding *mén-os, *mén-es-os. Vowels *e and *o are now separate phonemes, so *o can spread to accented morphemes.

o Sound Law 3: In some environments, short *e and *o are lengthened; e.g. *pχ-tḗr ‘father’ is the outcome of an earlier short *e, either because it stood before a word-final resonant, or because it is a compensatory lengthening from **pχ-ters (Szemerényi’s law).

o Finally, the full reconstructible Middle PIE nominal accent-ablaut system includes also a hysterokinetic (e.g. nom. *pχ-tḗr, acc. *pχ-térm, gen. *pχ-trés) and an amphikinetic one (e.g. *su̯ésor- / *su̯esr-és ‘sister’).

· The earliest reconstructible PIE gender system showed differences in gender agreement only in the grammatical cases. Different agreement patterns arose primarily in the nominative, with common gender nouns, adjectives, and pronouns showing different case/number endings in contrast to neuter nouns, which did not distinguish the nominative and the accusative (Matasović 2014).

o Development of ablative by adding *-i to the instrumental, cf. PA *-(o)ti. The common ending *-(e)s developed later.

o Nominal paradigms for Middle PIE:

static

proterodynamic

hysterodynamic

inanim./anim.

inanim.

anim.

nom.

*CéC-C(-s)

*CéC-C

*CéC-C(-s)

acc.

*CéC-C(-m)

*CéC-C

*CC-éC-m

abl.

*CéC-C-s

*CC-éC-s

*CC-C-és

ins.

*CéC-C-t

*CC-éC-t

dat.

*CéC-C-i

-

*CC-C-éi

i-loc.

*CéC-C-i

*CC-éC-i

all.

*CéC-C

-

*CC-C-é

Ø-loc.

*CéC-C

*CC-éC

Verbal system:

· Basic forms were probably injunctive (tenseless) *CéC-t and derivative *CéC-i, with an affix *-i which was either an aspectual (progressive, ongoing at refrence time) or a temporal (hinc et nunc, i.e. ‘here and now’) mark.

· Endings originally only *-m, *-s, *-t, which added information on person and number.

· From punctual verbal roots derivatives could be made (by reduplication, n-infix, etc.) with repetitive, durative, causative, etc. meaning; with suffix *-s- a punctual derivative could be made from non-punctual roots.